In defense of Otpor

When they claim that Otpor was an American
operation to unseat Milosevic, they do not bother to explain why all these
other organizations were fighting Milosevic, some for years before Otpor joined
the fight. Were they all American puppets?

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A spectre is haunting the Internet it seems –
the spectre of Otpor. Many powers of the blogosphere have entered into a holy
alliance to exorcise this specter: Putin’s media outlets, crackpot conspiracy theorists, even some people on
the left (very disturbing to me). They’ve spent the last decade deconstructing
a movement that hasn’t existed since 2004. It is easy to butcher a corpse
because it cannot fight back. But I feel an obligation to defend Otpor; it was a movement I belonged to, so let
me deconstruct this “deconstruction.”

A few facts about Otpor. It was a movement that
existed in Serbia between late 1998 and early 2004. It played an important role
in the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000; it was a laboratory out of which
came some new and original organizing concepts and it has inspired social
movements worldwide ever since. It doesn’t exist as an organization anymore,
but still influences the world. And with every passing year, the criticism of
Otpor and its legacy seems to be growing – not just in Serbia, but around the
world.

There are different critics of Otpor and the
motivations behind their criticism are not the same. Media outlets sponsored by
different autocrats want to discredit Otpor because they are afraid of their
own populations; they worry their people may use civil resistance against them.
Discrediting popular movements as not genuine, as imported, seems like a good
idea to them. But in the end it never works. Blaming foreigners for you
internal troubles is like blaming your mother-in-law for your marital problems.
It does not save the marriage.

The motivation of conspiracy theorists is not
very clear. Maybe it is safest to say that there is a global conspiracy of
conspiracy theorists to discourage dissent by persuading everyone that any
rebellion is part of a conspiracy. Let’s just leave it at that.

The motivation of critics on the left is to
expose the American Empire and its role in the world. So, if they see US
involvement, however small, in a country experiencing unrest – they totally
disregard the local context and put it in the American context. Now that’s what
I call an imperialist state of mind.

There are a number of formal problems with such
critiques of Otpor I wish to address before I get to the essence of my
deconstruction. Critics often conflate former Otpor members with Otpor itself;
so you will often find criticism of ‘Otpor’ mixed with criticism of individuals
who were once part of that movement.

The most popular target, back in vogue thanks to
a recent expose by Carl Gibson and Steven Horn, is
Srdja Popovic and his organization CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action
and Strategies). Otpor and CANVAS are two different entities – Otpor was a mass
movement, its goal was to bring down Milosevic; CANVAS is a small NGO with a
mission to disseminate knowledge about nonviolent action. CANVAS was founded
only a year after Otpor had ceased to exist, and Srdja himself left Otpor years
before launching this organization.

But I don’t want to defend Srdja and CANVAS here
– they are more than capable of countering criticisms on their own. I want to
defend Otpor because Otpor, being long dead, cannot fight back; not just Otpor,
I wish to defend the struggle of the Serbian people against Milosevic.

Herein lies another formal problem: it was not
just Otpor. Critics ignore the fact that Otpor was but one part of a much
larger front fighting against Milosevic and his regime – an alliance of
political parties, trade unions, independent media and NGOs. When they claim
that Otpor was an American operation to unseat Milosevic, they do not bother to
explain why all these other organizations were fighting Milosevic, some for
years before Otpor joined the fight. Were they all American puppets?

Even Vojislav Kostunica, the politician who
defeated Milosevic in the 2000 presidential elections – elections Milosevic
attempted to falsify, provoking nationwide civil disobedience and the general
strike which brought him down – was he too an American puppet? Kostunica is
well known for his anti-American views, as well as his opposition to NATO and the EU; some even claim
(though personally, I find it unlikely) that he was responsible for setting the
American Embassy on fire during the riots which shook Belgrade after Kosovo
declared independence in 2004. Some puppet.

Even those members of Otpor who were veterans of
the 1996-97 student protest which lasted for four months without any western
support? Back then Milosevic was called a ‘factor of stability’ in the Balkans
and a guarantor of the Dayton accords which ended the Bosnian War a year
earlier. Otpor was founded by these students and operated without any external
assistance during its formative phase. We didn’t have an office for the first
year – and when we got one, it wasn’t Bill Clinton who offered us a small
apartment, but an activist’s mother.

Otpor did receive foreign support in the end,
from the US, but also from Europeans and others. In fact we asked for it. It
was a tough choice, but important choices are never easy. These countries
bombed us – talking to the representatives of their governments and heads
of their foundations was not without discomfort. But the decision to look for
support abroad was informed by the understanding that the only people who had
money in Serbia at that time were war profiteers and war criminals. All money
in the country was bloody. Confronted by that reality, foreign support seemed
the lesser evil. Looking back, this turned out to be the correct decision.

Now let me get to the point and I’ll put it
bluntly: you can’t criticize Otpor without endorsing Milosevic and his fascist
regime. If you are brave enough to say Otpor’s role was negative then you
should be bold enough to say Milosevic’s role was positive. And while you’re at
it, maybe you should also say a word or two about Srebrenica. Eight
thousand people were killed there, you know. You can’t have it both
ways.

Of course, critics of Otpor already know this –
that’s why they dodge it over and over again whenever it is brought up. They
don’t put things into context; they just mention US support to Otpor while
never talking about what kind of regime Otpor was up against. Talking about US
support to Otpor without mentioning Milosevic is like saying Stalin and
Churchill were allies without mentioning Hitler. Without Hitler, this alliance
would be the most sinister of pacts, both from the Tory and Bolshevik point of
view. But mention Hitler and it all makes sense.

The same goes for US support for our struggle
against Milosevic, a fight which had been going on for nearly a decade before
western countries finally decided to step in and help. And they deserve credit
for that aid as much as they deserve criticism for treating Milosevic as a
partner for the majority of his reign. The most important thing then, as now,
is what Otpor was fighting against.

Of course, ten years later many things didn’t
turn out the way we envisioned. What we fought to achieve is not what we got in
the end. In other words, we didn’t fight for this, we fought against that,
and we always should. And should we be disappointed? We should be disappointed
in ourselves – in what we are or are not doing today, not in what we did back
in the nineties. The fight against Milosevic was a good fight, and I dare any
critic of Otpor to come out and say it wasn’t.

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